Posts Tagged ‘Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes’

Tuesday, March 6th, 2012

Toronto to get a dose of hard, French Justice (and yet another serving of M83)

Pedro WinterSo yes, Radiohead was far and away the big concert announcement of yesterday, but not far behind was the announcement of the lineup for this year’s HARD, an electronically-oriented festival that’s made Toronto stops the last few years. It’s existed on the periphery of my radar, but the 2012 edition has my firm attention.

HARD will bring some French electro action in electro-disco duo Justice – supporting last year’s Audio, Video, Disco – and retro-futurist shoegazers M83 – marking their third show in Toronto in support of Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming – to Fort York on August 4 with Toronto’s own Austra and Portugese dance crew Buraka Som Sistema as the undercard. And if you’re Osheaga or Lollapalooza lineup-spotting, well it seems a safe bet that both fests will have some synthetically Gallic flavour this year.

A national historic site – particularly one that’s celebrating the 200th anniversary of being blown up – seems an odd place for a rave-up, but also somehow perfect. Either way, I’m just super-keen for any kind of festival in the city’s downtown and even though this is maybe dancier than I’d normally hit up, I’m surprisingly keen on it. Tickets are $49 and are on sale now; there were a limited number of $39 early birds, but I think they’re all gone now. Alas.

Joel Plaskett – who is eight weeks into the recording of his one-song-a-week album Scrappy Happiness – still due out March 27 – has been announced as the main attraction at this year’s Canadian Musicfest kick-off party way up on top of the CN Tower on March 21. Admission is gained only by winning a contest, so if you want to be there, get on that. And if you want to see him a little closer to sea level, there’s still the May 18 and 19 dates at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Spinner and The Globe & Mail talk to Plaskett about the Scrappy Happiness experience so far.

Los Angeles hippy-rock collective Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes will be at the Kool Haus May 13 to preview songs from their new album Here, due out May 29. Tickets for that are $29.50 in advance.

Hot on the heels of the first video from Port Of Morrow – out March 20 – comes a second one from The Shins, though this much simpler than the one for “Simple Song”. At this rate, there’ll be clips for every song on the album by the time they hit The Molson Amphitheatre on August 4, opening for The Black Keys.